Ten Doors Down

by Tickner, Robert;

  ‘I want to tell you,’ she said, ‘but there are two conditions.’

  ‘Of course, whatever you want,’ I said immediately. And I meant it. I desperately wanted to know his name, but it had to be on my mother’s terms.

  ‘Firstly, I don’t want you to contact him until I’m ready for it. And secondly, I don’t want you to speak of me or reveal anything about me.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said again.

  ‘His name is Leonard Douglass Murray,’ she said. ‘The spelling of his second name is unusual …’ She muttered something so softly I could barely hear it over the noise of the road — something about a ‘double s’ in his second name. I realised that she was implying that perhaps that would make it easier to find him.

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ I said, not wanting to sound too excited. In fact, I was so grateful and fired up that my grip on the steering wheel had become vice-like. I was so particularly moved that Maida was telling me the name of my birth father, because it was obviously such a huge act of selfless love. She had a deep integrity, which meant that she recognised that I had a right to know, and she wouldn’t stand in the way of that.

  Maida told me one final detail: my birth father had grown up in the Sutherland Shire. This, of course, intrigued me, because half my electorate of Hughes was based in the Sutherland Shire. Still, I remained calm, with my eyes focused on the road ahead. I felt that any show of excitement or overt interest might be seen as disloyalty or betrayal so soon after our beautiful reunion. Maida had every right to be in charge of this process; I fully respected this without question. I was immensely impressed by the strength of character she’d shown in setting some ground rules for contact right from the outset in order to protect herself.

  The rest of our trip to Forster was uneventful by comparison, but it meant a lot to me to be able to show my mother the house where I’d lived with Mum and Dad, where I’d gone to school, the pool where I’d swum, the beaches where I’d surfed, and all my other memories from the town.

  During the two days we were in Forster-Tuncurry, we stayed in my mother Gwen’s unit, which had not yet been sold. Our presence in the unit raised another difficult ethical question. I still had it in the back of my mind that it would be wonderful if mother Maida could meet mother Gwen. Mum was still living in the aged-persons complex a couple of blocks — only 300 metres — away, and was still able to recognise me and have meaningful conversations, but her memory and capacity were fading fast due to the impact of the dementia. I couldn’t help suggesting to Maida the possibility of introducing her to mother Gwen while there was still the chance that Mum could appreciate what was happening. Maida was adamant that it wasn’t the right thing to do, and I dropped the suggestion immediately. I went to see my mother Gwen on my own, while Maida remained at the unit.

  14

  Giving in to temptation

  There was no question of me not following my mother’s wishes about seeking a reunion with my birth father — I’d promised to wait until she was ready for that step. But naturally my curiosity was deeply aroused from the moment I heard his name. As it turned out, it was well over a year before Maida indicated that she was ready for me to attempt a potential reunion. For me, that wait was difficult.

  Then again, there was no barrier to me trying to find out more about him in the interim, and I wasted no time in doing so. The day after that illuminating trip to Forster with my mother, I was in Darwin to fulfil a ministerial commitment. Free for a moment that afternoon, I went to the Commonwealth electoral office to look up the electoral rolls for New South Wales, which were still public at that time. I managed to find a Leonard Douglass Murray on the electoral roll at Mangrove Mountain, inland from Gosford in New South Wales, and suddenly had a flashback to that one-off conversation my mother Gwen had had with me when I was a little boy. She had mentioned the name Beasley (Maida’s family name) and had also said something about my father being an electrical engineer or something similar. I remembered exactly where we were in the house in Lake Street when we had had that talk, so it must have been significant for me at the time. Was my father an electrical engineer, or had I confused something in my child’s mind?

  When I looked again at the roll, I saw four other Murrays at the same address: Craig, Jeanette, Lola, and Neil. I assumed that one of the female names was my father’s wife, and it suddenly hit me that the others might be my siblings. I was truly dumbstruck. Of course, I should have considered the possibility of having brothers and sisters before this, but I hadn’t. Just meeting my birth father had seemed a crazy outside possibility, given all that I’d read about the unlikelihood of successful meetings between adopted children and their birth fathers. But now there was the possibility of at least three potential siblings, maybe more.

  I am ashamed to confess that later that night in my Darwin hotel room, I did something irresponsible. Thankfully no one was hurt in the process. Through directory assistance, I got a phone number for the address at Mangrove Mountain. I had no intention of having a conversation with my birth father, but I thought it could do no harm to simply hear his voice if he answered.

  I called the number.

  When the call was answered — by a man, perhaps my father — I had a rush of blood to the head and spontaneously asked for a ‘Mr Jackson’, the first name that came into my head.

  By weird coincidence, the man replied that a Mr Jackson had once lived at that address, but was no longer there.

  We exchanged a few words before I sheepishly and quickly ended the call. I immediately regretted what I’d done, and of course I had no idea if I had just spoken to my father, or even whether he was still alive.

  When I returned to Sydney, I made use of the snippet of information I’d received from my mother about my father growing up in the Sutherland Shire. I went to the State Library of New South Wales in Macquarie Street to search the electoral rolls for the period when I estimated he’d lived there. Bingo! I quickly found Leonard Douglass Murray and his father (my grandfather, who was listed as a railway worker) at an address in Gymea Bay Road, Gymea. Coincidentally, this road was at one time the border between my electorate of Hughes and the neighbouring electorate of Cook. Later that day, I drove there and found that the old house was still standing, with two giant old palms out the front.

  But I was still a long way from any possible family reunion with my father — and perhaps my siblings, too. The months marched on without any indication from Maida that she was ready for me to take the next step. I became very anxious about it all, and developed a morbid fear that my father might die before I met him. After all, I had no idea about the state of his health.

  I put my mind to work to see if there was any more information I could find and suddenly remembered one of my very close friends in the Sutherland Shire, Hazel Wilson. Hazel had lived in the area a long time, and had stood against me for preselection as federal member for Hughes in 1984. When she was eliminated from the ballot, it was her preferences that helped get me elected.

  I called Hazel, and after a little chat about local politics, asked her if she’d ever come across a Leonard Murray while growing up in the Shire. I didn’t explain why I was asking, just waited for her response, pressing my hand into the desk in anticipation. I suspected that she was a similar age to my father, which she later proved to be.

  I was dumbfounded when she replied, ‘Yes, I grew up with him. I knew him well.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you have a photo of him?’ I asked, almost jumping out of my skin at the thought.

  ‘Doubt it, but I’ll have a look.’

  I was grateful that she didn’t ask me why I was enquiring about him. Much later, she told me that she knew I was adopted and therefore had her vague suspicions. I was astounded by how perceptive she’d been.

  A week went by, and I still hadn’t heard from Hazel, so I phoned again to remind her. A few days later, she dropped a tiny envelope in to my
office.

  I opened it eagerly to find an even smaller photograph inside. It was old and discoloured and showed a group of young people in, of all places, Stanwell Park in 1947. My father would have been only 20 years old at the time. He was standing behind two other young people, a man and a woman, who were seated, and he was posing with his hands on their shoulders. In yet another extraordinary coincidence, the woman whose shoulder my father was touching was Hazel Wilson. I couldn’t believe my luck that the one person I’d asked about my father not only knew him well, but had a photograph of them together.

  Even though I couldn’t see his face clearly, even with a magnifying glass, he looked reasonably tall and well built. I was excited beyond belief. The photograph made me feel closer to him, despite the fact that I could not make out his facial features.

  My next detective foray some months later brought me dangerously close to being caught out and, worse still, inadvertently violating my mother’s wishes.

  I’d decided to drive to Mangrove Mountain to see where my father lived. I had no intention of making contact of any kind, but just felt I wanted to be near him. When I found the address, it seemed to be a modest-sized farm, and the house wasn’t visible from the road. I felt stupid sitting in my old Nissan Skyline opposite the farm gate, imagining what the house beyond the rise might look like and wondering whether my father was in there, only a couple of hundred metres away. My heart was pounding, and my nerves were raw.

  I had a scheduled radio interview with John Doyle on 2BL that afternoon, and did it on my mobile phone (which was the size of a house brick in those days) while still sitting in the car I’d inherited from my father Bert out the front of my father Len’s house on a remote road in Mangrove Mountain. It was all pretty weird, and I fantasised about how amazing it would be if my father happened to be listening to the interview inside the house.

  Then, just as the interview finished, I got a terrible shock. A car slowly came down the driveway to the front gate. A woman got out, opened the gate, and started to walk over to me.

  ‘Are you okay?’ she called. ‘Can I help?’

  Panicked, I jumped out of the car and mumbled something incomprehensible about tyre trouble, trying to turn my face away as I spoke. I told the woman I was fine, quickly returned to my car, and fled. She must have thought I was some weird stalker, which would have been a reasonable conclusion in the circumstances. Later, once I’d regained my composure, I realised she must have been my father’s wife, and that made me feel even worse.

  As I drove home, chastened and ashamed, I thought about how selfish I had been. Who was I to intrude into this family? What if my father didn’t want to meet me? What if he didn’t even know I existed? Or was so ashamed of me that he’d never told his wife and the rest of his family? I could have been responsible for destroying a family.

  I was a mess.

  I was also consumed by an all-powerful urge to meet my birth father. Somehow, I was convinced that it was all meant to be, and that, ultimately, we would meet.

  15

  Grieving for Mother Gwen

  My responsibilities as a local MP took on a new dimension in January 1994 when catastrophic bushfires ravaged the Royal National Park that I loved so much, destroying 90 per cent of it and leaving a charred, blackened moonscape. And things were to get even worse. On the afternoon of 8 January, the fires escaped the bushland around the Woronora River in the Sutherland Shire and burned through the adjacent suburbs of Como, Jannali, and Bonnet Bay. It was a terror-stricken time for the residents, as the fire took over the streets. Dozens of homes were destroyed, and a woman lost her life.

  The community response in the aftermath of the fire was inspirational. People rallied together to help. My electorate-office team were part of that, and responded to hundreds of requests for assistance.

  On the evening of 13 January, as I was on the way to a major public meeting that had been called in the aftermath of the fires, I got a call on my mobile phone from my old family friend Doctor Sanders in Forster. My heart was in my mouth, as I could think of few reasons why Doctor Sanders would be calling me, and I feared the worst.

  ‘I have some bad news, I’m afraid,’ he told me. ‘Your mum has just passed away. There was nothing we could do for her.’

  ‘Did she suffer?’ I asked. ‘Were you there? Can you tell me about it, please? I need to know?’

  The thought of my precious mother dying all alone sickened me. I felt immediate guilt that I hadn’t been with her.

  ‘I was there, and she was very much at peace,’ he reassured me.

  I was grief-stricken and in shock. My beloved mother, who had given me so much, and who I was closer to than anyone else in the world, was gone. Although she had been deteriorating mentally, she had otherwise seemed to be in robust good health, and her death hit me hard. I was bereft and sobbed inconsolably in my car, parked on the Princes Highway at Engadine. I phoned Jody, and she consoled me as best she could, but I was so distressed I didn’t know if I could drive the car. I sat by the roadside for a time to let it all sink in.

  Just as when my father had died, I was torn between my private grief and my public responsibilities. As the local federal MP, I was expected to attend this important community meeting, where I knew people would also be grieving for their losses. Tensions would be high, and there was a strong expectation that I would assist the community with information about rebuilding, insurance, and social-security-related issues.

  I drove to the meeting and did what I could, and told no one what had just happened.

  Mum’s funeral was held in Forster a week later, at the local Uniting Church just across the road from where I lived as a child. Mum’s friends and family came to the service, and Maida drove up from Sydney, too, to pay her own special tribute to the venerated person who had taken on the role of bringing up her son.

  Afterwards, I returned to work immediately, not taking any time to process my mother’s death. I deeply regret this, as the loss and grief hit me like a ton of bricks two years later in 1996, after I lost my seat in the election of that year. These days, I’m the first to tell people that grieving is such an important thing to do when you lose someone precious.

  After my mother Gwen’s death, my yearning to meet my birth father increased. I kept my pledge to Maida not to make contact, but fervently hoped that she would raise the topic again soon.

  I knew that approaching my father directly would have been ethically wrong for other reasons, too. There were established processes for making the initial contact, which Sandra at the Department of Community Services would undoubtedly manage when the time came. Any transgression of these processes was fraught with danger.

  At this stage, though, it was all academic. Without Maida being comfortable with me proceeding, my hope to meet my father wasn’t going anywhere.

  When liberty was granted some months later, it came without warning. I was drinking coffee with Maida in her kitchen when she quietly said, ‘Look, Robert, I’m okay with it now, if you want to follow up.’

  I looked at her, not yet clear on what I was being told.

  She added, ‘You know, with the other party to all this.’

  I smiled, and caressed her arm to reassure her. ‘Whatever happens, if anything, you can be assured that nothing will change with us in any way. You’re my mother forever, and my commitment is to you absolutely.’

  ‘Please don’t forget what I told you about the way I want this handled,’ she reminded me, but I didn’t need reminding. Being an intensely private person, she didn’t want my father or his family to know anything about her. It was a very reasonable request.

  ‘Of course,’ I told her. ‘I’ll honour your wishes, there’s no doubt about that.’

  No matter how much I tried to smother my feelings, she could see that I was deeply grateful to her. Once again, it was a powerful testament to the strength of my mother�
��s character that she managed this process so magnificently. I had read about many reunions with relinquishing mothers that had been unwittingly damaged by children rushing to meet their birth fathers. Maida was having none of that, and I respected her so much for her wisdom and strength.

  16

  An exchange of letters

  I got in touch with Sandra and told her I was now ready to see if contact with my father could be made. In her kind way, Sandra later telephoned Maida to check that she was coping with this recent development, as indeed she was.

  Sandra swung into action and made first contact, in the form of a discreet letter from the department asking my father to get in touch about an event ‘a long time in the past’. The letter didn’t elicit a response.

  Some weeks later, Sandra sent another similar letter, but again there was no response. Of course, at the time, I wondered if the lack of response was a sign of rejection.

  Despite this setback, I was unshakeable in my belief that the reunion would occur, and I pleaded with Sandra not to give up. ‘I know it will happen,’ I kept telling her. After all that had happened, I just couldn’t conceive of failure as an option.

  Sandra had to explain to me that we were getting to the point where further communication would be inappropriate and outside departmental guidelines. She made it clear that such letters could constitute harassment, and we may have reached the end of the road.

  I pleaded with her to give it one more go. ‘Just one more try. I know it’ll work.’

  I guess my buoyant optimism and determination were persuasive, because Sandra did give it just one more try. A week or so later, she called me to say that she’d been successful. She’d called the Mangrove Mountain house, and my father had picked up the phone. The conversation was open, warm, and engaging, and he was very much interested in making contact with me.

  I was in the Northern Territory at the time to finalise the handing back of some Aboriginal land to its traditional owners. I was ecstatic to receive the news, but of course I couldn’t share it with the people I was travelling with. Instead, my joy found its expression in my particularly excited and upbeat mood that day.